Date: 1704

"For, it is the opinion of choice virtuosi, that the brain is only a crowd of little animals, but with teeth and claws extremely sharp, and therefore cling together in the contexture we behold, like the picture of Hobbes's Leviathan, or like bees in perpendicular swarm upon a tr...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: 1704

"Others rather believe there is a perpetual game at leap-frog between both, and sometimes the flesh is uppermost, and sometimes the spirit; adding that the former, while it is in the state of a rider, wears huge Rippon spurs, and when it comes to the turn of be...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: 1758

"If, therefore, you would be a musical and harmonious Person, whenever, in Parties of Drinking, the Soul is bedewed with Wine, suffer her not to go forth, and defile herself [like a snail]."

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)

Date: 1758

"But when, in Parties of Conversation, she glows by the Beams of Reason, then command her [the soul] to speak from Inspiration and utter the Oracles of Justice [like a Grasshopper]."

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)

Date: 1758

"In all Vice, Pleasure being presented like a Bait, draws sensual Minds to the Hook of Perdition."

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)

Date: w. 1821, 1840

"For Lucretius had limed the wings of his swift spirit in the dregs of the sensible world."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: w. 1821, 1840

"What were virtue, love, patriotism, friendship - what were the scenery of this beautiful universe which we inhabit; what were our consolations on this side of the grave - and what were our aspirations beyond it, if poetry did not ascend to bring light and fire from those eternal regions where th...

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)